“There is no longer a safe place in Ukraine”

Looking east. Josafat Chajmyk, the priest of the Greek Catholic St. Andrew's Church in Lviv, shows where the drone that damaged the church came from

Looking east. Josafat Chajmyk, the priest of the Greek Catholic St. Andrew's Church in Lviv, shows where the drone that damaged the church came from

Lviv. Elizaveta Bobrova and her colleague Roksoljana Holovata still remember March 24th clearly. The two researchers from the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe were holding a seminar in the institute's rooms in downtown Lviv when the air raid siren suddenly blared. They looked at each other briefly in surprise. Until then, air alarms were rarely heard in Lviv in western Ukraine, especially during the day. But then they decided to go to the shelter in the basement of the old house. It should be the right decision.

“A little later we heard an extremely loud bang,” Bobrowa recalled two months later, “and then we knew that something must have hit nearby.” Shortly afterwards, ambulances and police cars roared through downtown Lviv. Videos posted on social media show a Russian Shahed drone crashing into a house in the middle of Lviv's Old Town. It just misses the neighboring 17th century St. Andrew's Church.

Yaroslav Basylevych's entire family died when a Russian Kinschal hypersonic missile hit their home in downtown Lviv in September 2024.

To read this content, an online subscription is required::